Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast, sat down with Dario Markovic, CEO of Eric Javits, the 40-year-old luxury accessories brand, to unpack what it actually takes to rewire an established brand for the digital age. Markovic’s central finding: CEOs who try to change everything at once destroy the very momentum they need. The CEOs who win pick one or two channels that show early results and pour resources into those. At Eric Javits, that discipline — applied during the brand’s 2020 digital transformation — is what Markovic identifies as the single insight that, had he known it on day one, would have saved the team months of wasted time and real money.
This episode is for CEOs leading digital transformation of an established brand who are deciding where to focus first and how fast to move.
Key Takeaways
- Dario Markovic, CEO of Eric Javits, found that scattering effort across too many channels in the early stages of transformation wastes money and time; doubling down on the one or two channels showing early traction produced faster, cleaner results during the brand’s 2020 digital transformation.
- Markovic credits stepping back and viewing Eric Javits as an outsider, even briefly and deliberately, with spotting gaps that daily proximity hides from every senior leader.
- Eric Javits team members who had worked at the company for 20-plus years resisted Markovic’s 2020 transformation at first, but his patience and the visible results won them over; those same employees now rank among his strongest collaborators.
- Markovic says AI gives smaller luxury brands like Eric Javits access to content velocity and data analytics that previously required budgets and headcount only large brands could afford.
- At Eric Javits, Markovic’s approach to AI adoption was not to demand enthusiasm but to remove the fear: he invested in education, assigned a guide, and let his team discover that AI is easier than what they replaced.
CEOs Who Try to Scale Everything at Once Scale Nothing
Markovic took over Eric Javits in 2020, a year that forced a decision most CEOs would prefer to defer. The brand needed digital transformation immediately, but the team, the budget, and the operating model were built for a different era.
His most expensive early lesson had nothing to do with technology or marketing spend. It was about discipline in the face of urgency.
“There’s this kind of belief you have to do everything in the beginning or everything at once. So to kind of get a better impact. I would rather say sometimes just stick with one or two things at the beginning and do them well. if they work, just double down on them. Just put more money into the channels or the strategies that you see working instead of diversifying.”
The practical framework is simple: identify the one or two channels or strategies that produce early signal. Do not expand until those are producing results. When they produce results, add budget to them, not to new experiments. Expansion comes from confidence earned in the first few wins, not from optimism spread across twenty bets.
Glenn Gow reinforced why this matters for most CEOs: the problem is not that CEOs lack priorities. It is that their list of real priorities is too long to execute. Forcing a shorter list is the discipline, and it is harder than it sounds.
Why CEOs Miss Growth Problems When They’re Closest to the Business
Markovic works with other business leaders through his memberships in the Forbes Council and the Fast Company Executive Board. When asked what CEOs consistently miss when their companies hit a growth wall, his answer was not a strategy failure. It was a perception failure.
“Take a step really back out of day to day or just trying to see the company as an outsider. I know it’s very difficult actually. It sounds easy, but it’s very difficult. I think that’s something many think, they see things up here very close. So you’ll see the overall and see, try to again, take a step back and see, hey, I’m actually missing certain things myself.”
Markovic describes staying too close to daily operations — without a scheduled forcing function to step back — as the structural cause of CEO blind spots. The CEO who is deepest in the operation is often the last to see what is broken, because the daily rhythm creates certainty, and certainty stops the leader from seeking evidence that contradicts the narrative they have already built.
The CEOs who break through growth walls tend to create a forcing function: a scheduled, protected block of time to look at the company the way an outsider would. Not a one-time retreat, but a discipline built into the operating rhythm. Markovic argues this is not a soft skill. It is a strategic requirement.
How CEOs Move Resistant Teams Through Transformation
Markovic did not arrive at Eric Javits to find a team eager for change. He found the opposite.
“In my case, it was rather just, I think they weren’t accepting it. They were in the beginning, at least many of the team members were very against it, to be honest with you. It was very difficult then to understand and understandably, there’s a lot of people that are working 20 plus years for the company. So suddenly, having that switch done within a few months, very difficult to kind of accept or just go through it.”
The team’s resistance was not irrational. People who have operated a certain way for two decades have succeeded inside that system. Being asked to abandon it is not just an operational ask. It is a challenge to everything they know about how to win.
Markovic’s approach was not to argue them into acceptance. He moved fast, stayed patient with the frustration, and let results do the convincing.
“We had to do it just because of the situation that we were in back in 2020. So there’s now the choice to kind of transform people slowly and get them through and to accept it and be a part of it. But I think eventually we acted quick and they saw the results. They understood and today, it’s I think stronger than ever working with those team members. Obviously, on my side, I was very understanding. I was understanding their frustrations and their opposition to me.”
Five years later, the same team members who resisted most are now collaborating on change rather than opposing it.
The framework Markovic uses today reflects that experience. Before any change goes forward, the team tests it against a single question: does this make the company better and does it make everyone’s work more efficient? That filter killed at least one initiative that had strong internal advocacy but could not clear the efficiency bar — saving the team from a change that would have added process without adding output.
“If you get things done more efficient and better, you’re happier. End of day, so I think that’s kind of the goal of everyone in the company. How can we just make everyone more efficient? And in result of that, will be an end of days like, I accomplished this in such a great way and without much trouble.”
That framing converts change from a threat to a shared problem worth solving.
How CEOs Use AI to Compete Without Large-Brand Budgets
Markovic is direct about his relationship with AI. He calls himself a fan, and he is specific about where that enthusiasm is grounded.
For a luxury brand at Eric Javits’ scale, the traditional content machine is expensive. Photo shoots cost real money every quarter. A content refresh that used to require that level of investment can now happen more frequently and at a fraction of the cost.
“I think it’s a huge advantage, I’d say, in content creation. Ideations and imagery just having a flow of content without spinning or doing certain shoots that could cost you $1,500,000 each quarter or each month if you do them regularly. I think this is a big opportunity for smaller brands to have that content refresh more frequent instead of like yearly or every season.”
The second area is data. Small brands historically could not afford the analysts or the systems to extract meaningful intelligence from their customer and sales data. AI changes that math.
“The data analytics and data intelligence, which you don’t need to hire a few people to get you that information. AI will get to you for a fraction of the cost. And if you can use it, it could be very powerful, which I think for small companies that they just couldn’t afford it or just didn’t have the time and means to get there. And AI changed the game.”
Markovic also names the risk directly. Distraction is real. AI produces many interesting outputs that feel important but do not move the business. The same focus discipline that applies to marketing channels applies to AI tools: find what actually produces business impact and resist the pull of everything else.
CEOs Build AI Adoption the Same Way They Build Any Cultural Change
The same resistance Markovic encountered when transforming the brand’s operations shows up again with AI. The playbook is the same.
When asked how he brings people along who are uncertain or scared of AI, Markovic returns to patience and investment in education.
“We spent a lot of time and budget internally for getting everyone up to speed with technology and AI. If they have certain fear or just not sure about using it or not know how to use it, we’re very patient of getting them every tool and every education they need to get to use it. So it can be scary if you don’t know where to start, you know how to use it. But once you have someone that can lead you and show you, this is much easier than what you did before. And this could open your mind even to more things.”
The result at Eric Javits: no internal resistance to AI. The team is not uniformly at Markovic’s level of enthusiasm, but they are engaged and using the tools.
The model is not top-down mandating. It is guided discovery. A CEO who invests in showing people how to get started, rather than expecting them to figure it out alone, gets adoption. A CEO who assumes the tools are intuitive gets avoidance.
Principles CEOs Apply to Scale a Legacy Brand Through Digital Transformation
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Focus before you expand | Identify one or two channels with early signal and add budget to those; do not expand until you have results | At Eric Javits, concentrating on the channels that showed early signal during the 2020 transformation — rather than spreading across the full map — produced the results that brought a resistant 20-plus-year team along; Markovic names this as the decision that saved real time and money and wishes he had understood it on day one |
| The outsider view is a discipline, not an event | CEOs who step back deliberately and regularly to see the company as an outsider catch what proximity hides | Markovic identifies staying too close to daily operations — without a forcing function to step back — as the structural reason CEOs miss growth problems; he names this pattern consistently in his work with business leaders through the Forbes Council and Fast Company Executive Board, where he sees it as the most common blind spot among CEOs who have hit a growth wall |
| Results convert resistors faster than arguments | Moving fast, staying patient with frustration, and letting results speak brings resistant long-tenured employees through change better than persuasion | Eric Javits team members who had worked at the company for 20-plus years and actively opposed the 2020 transformation are, five years later, among the strongest collaborators on change — after seeing what the new approach produced |
| AI’s value for small brands is in content velocity and data access | AI removes the cost barriers to content refresh frequency and data analytics that previously only large-brand budgets could clear | Markovic cites quarterly content shoots costing up to $1.5 million as a cost AI content generation reduces; Eric Javits now refreshes content more frequently than a seasonal or yearly cycle, and accesses data analytics without the headcount those functions previously required |
| Guided adoption beats assumed adoption | CEOs who invest in education and assign a guide for AI tools get a team that discovers AI is easier than what came before; CEOs who assume intuition gets avoidance | Eric Javits committed real time and budget to getting every team member the tools and education they need, and reports no internal AI resistance as a result |
Quotes from This Episode
- “There’s this kind of belief you have to do everything in the beginning or everything at once. So to kind of get a better impact. I would rather say sometimes just stick with one or two things at the beginning and do them well.” — Dario Markovic, CEO, Eric Javits
- “Take a step really back out of day to day or just trying to see the company as an outsider. I know it’s very difficult actually. It sounds easy, but it’s very difficult.” — Dario Markovic, CEO, Eric Javits
- “Once you have someone that can lead you and show you, this is much easier than what you did before. And this could open your mind even to more things.” — Dario Markovic, CEO, Eric Javits
- “The data analytics and data intelligence, which you don’t need to hire a few people to get you that information. AI will get to you for a fraction of the cost. And if you can use it, it could be very powerful.” — Dario Markovic, CEO, Eric Javits
Frequently Asked Questions
How should a CEO decide what to prioritize when every channel seems equally important during a digital transformation?
CEOs facing a long list of competing priorities during a digital transformation get better results by identifying the one or two channels or strategies that produce early signal, committing resources there, and refusing to expand until those produce results. Dario Markovic, CEO of Eric Javits, applied this discipline during the brand’s 2020 transformation and identifies scattering effort too widely early on as the single costliest mistake he made — one he says cost real time and money before he recognized the pattern.
How does a CEO get a long-tenured team to accept major operational change without losing the people who know the business best?
CEOs who move fast, stay patient with the frustration of resistance, and let visible results do the convincing tend to bring long-tenured employees through change without losing them. Dario Markovic, CEO of Eric Javits, describes team members who had worked at the company for 20-plus years and initially opposed the 2020 transformation as now being among the strongest collaborators on change, five years later, after they saw what the new approach produced.
How can a small luxury brand use AI without getting distracted by tools that look impressive but don’t move the business?
Small luxury brands get the most from AI by concentrating on content creation and data analytics — the two areas where AI removes cost barriers that previously required large-brand budgets. Markovic points to quarterly content shoots costing up to $1.5 million and data analytics headcount as specific costs AI can reduce at a fraction of the price. The discipline is the same as scaling any channel: find what produces measurable business impact and resist the pull of interesting tools that do not.
CEOs Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Their Leadership
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach — he coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits. With 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital, Glenn helps leaders scale their companies by scaling themselves first. If this conversation was useful, there are two ways to go further: Apply for Executive Coaching | Apply to Be a Guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast
